So on Ubuntu, How do I change the size of the drive partition that Ubuntu is on? OR how do I seperate Ubuntu OS from everything else? My partition size is 10 gigs, hard drive is 160 gigs, so how do I save all my music, videos and pics to my free space? By default everything goes to my 10gigger and now Im obviously out of space. I am a newbie so please speak in english and refrain from using acronyms and fancy geek language please thank you.

Hello keithblahblahblah,

you'll have to creat one or more new partition on your harddrive, format them and create entries in your /etc/fstab. Unfortunately this things work different with ubuntu. But I'd suggest to google for an explanation of the fdisk program, take a look here: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.html

Markus

Unfortunately this is unavoidable - the "fancy" terms are there for a reason. I'll make you a deal: I'll try to explain as I go and you try to learn the language of linux as you go Please read the advise link in my sig.

I also have a crash course on the basic gnu/linux skills - here (pdf 108kB)

It sounds like your installation got messed up to leave you with too little room on that partition. You could always backup your data and reinstall Ubuntu to use the whole disk? That would be simplest. OR you could add a new partition to the free space and use that as storage.

I will be giving you commandline instructions - this is a power user tool which is very useful for troubleshooting through a forum.

go to:

applications > accessories > terminal

(drag the item to your desktop, you are going to use this a lot.)

in the terminal, you will got a commandprompt which has your name, some other stuff, and a $ sign - then a cursor. You enter commands there - which means that you write down what I say and press enter.

Lets look at your drive:

sudo fdisk -l

it will prompt for your password, when you enter your password it will not display anything. After that there will be a lot of output, then another prompt.

I want you to copy and paste everything from the first $ sign to the start of the next prompt to your reply. Once I have that I can tell you the next step.

If you feel good about this, the program you need to add a new partition and format it is called gparted.

Thank you all for your replies, I just re-installed Ubuntu in a bigger drive, that wasnt so bad at all. I am starting fresh anyways so I have no data to save yet. But I appreciate your help and I did learn some things from your replies. I still havent even gotten to the hard problems yet but I will make another thread thanks.

I know that the "fancy" language has a purpose and I value my geek friends, but COmmunication is how things get done.PEACE

It will be good if keithblahblahblah able to follow Simon Bridge instruction to create another partition. Newbies like me can learn a lot from your postings..

hey simransab: Keith is done - however, there are lots of tutorials around if you want to know how to add or resize a partition - like:
http://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TK5YezY-Xc (video)
Have fun.

Keithblahblahblah,
What you need is a separate /home partition. With a separate home partition all your data is on it's own partition, so it does not fill up your root partition. Your 10GB would have been fine for root. You just needed to create a separate /home partition.
Here is how to create a separate home partition while you are installing Ubuntu:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome
And here is how to add a separate home partition after you have already installed Ubuntu to one big partition. It is a bit more complicated; but the tutorial is easy enough to follow:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome

Hi,

It can be difficult for a non-tech person to communicate with a technical person partly due to techno-speak. But you could ask someone to clarify when you don't understand the terms. Or utilize your favorite search engine or wiki to elaborate.